The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventor(s), to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a signal modulation technique often used with wireless communications and some wired communications. OFDM offers high transmission rates and, thus, is beneficial for use in data networks. However, several difficulties may be encountered when attempting to efficiently process OFDM signals in a receiver. For example, processing an OFDM signal according to a two-dimensional technique, while efficient is overly complex for most implementations. Thus, a trade off for a less complex processing solution may be implemented. In one example, this may include one-dimensional processing techniques. However, one-dimensional processing can suffer from processing inefficiencies. Processing inefficiencies for a one-dimensional technique arise when conditions associated with an OFDM signal fall outside of an operational range for an implemented solution. Thus as conditions of the OFDM signal change, processing efficiency can be significantly reduced.
For example, consider a wireless network interface card (NIC) that uses a low complexity solution to process an OFDM signal received from a wireless access point. Typically, the low complexity solution is tuned to perform well for a specific set of operating conditions (e.g., slowly changing frequency selectivity). Thus, when the operating conditions fall outside of the tuned operation conditions (e.g., quickly changing frequency selectivity), processing becomes inefficient and system performance suffers.